The banning of political parties in post-Yugoslav states. Croatian and Serbian experience in using militant democracy

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of a classical militant democracy instrument, as banning of extremist parties since the beginning of the political transition in 1990s in post-Yugoslav states. Comparative studies are based on Croatian and Serbian experiences, when since political transition new types of political regimes started developing as part of a boom for national parties that could guarantee consolidation of the state. The methods employed for the analysis are the qualitative analysis of sources. Corpus of sources includes national legislation, official documents, NGOs’ reports, and media content related to banning political entities. Conclusions from the study provide knowledge fill the gap in the state of art about circumstances for dissolving anti-democratic entities in the post-Yugoslav states. Moreover, they allow to verify relevant approaches and models of anti-democratic organizations, encompassing the specific types of political culture in Croatia and Serbia.

KEYWORDS:

• Banning political parties
• militant democracy
• political parties in Serbia
• political parties in Croatia

Disclosure statements

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Electoral democracy was introduced by Diamond’s original typology of political regime forms (Diamond 1999). Vedran Džihić and Dieter Segert used that category in describing Croatia’s and Serbia’s political systems. Electoral democracy is a regime of elite governance endowed by certain support from the citizens but without any ambition of the ruling elite to increase the quality of democratic rule. Moreover, this type of regime is characterized by the dominating influence of small elite groups and, at the same time, by a low degree of participation in the population Mentioned above authors pointed that electoral democracy at post-Yugoslav area rooted in the ethno-nationalism (Džihić and Segert 2012, 242). Another typology is proposed by Freedom House, which in the last report classified Croatia as Semi-Consolidated Democracy and Serbia as a Transitional or Hybrid Regime (Freedom House 2021).

2. Year of the election – numbers of deputies: 1992–73 (government coalition partner); 1993–39; 1997–82 (leading government party); 2000–23; 2003–82; 2007–81; 2008–78; 2016–22

3. The year of the first Gay-Pride assembly in Belgrade.

Additional information

Funding

This research paper is a result of the research project Civil Disorder in Pandemic-ridden European Union. It was financially supported by the National Science Centre, Poland [grant number 2021/43/B/HS5/00290].

Notes on contributors

Maciej Skrzypek

Maciej Skrzypek is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism of Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. His scientific interests focus on changes in the functioning of opposition and political parties in neo-militant democracies, contemporary threats to liberal democracy, and the restrictions of civil freedoms. He is a co-investigator in the research projects “Contentious Politics and Neo-militant Democracy” and “Civil Disorder in Pandemic-ridden European Union” financed by the National Science Centre, Poland.